VMware Workstation Zealothttps://blogs.vmware.com/workstation
Official blog of VMware WorkstationMon, 25 Jun 2018 13:00:50 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.5Workstation Tech Preview 2018 Now Available for Testinghttps://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2018/06/workstation-tech-preview-2018.html
https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2018/06/workstation-tech-preview-2018.html#commentsMon, 25 Jun 2018 13:00:50 +0000http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/?p=2004A sneak peek into the future of VMware Workstation The VMware Workstation team is very excited to announce the VMware Workstation Technology Preview 2018 is available now! This release includes many great new features that we’ve been working on and we would love to hear your feedback in our Tech Preview Community. Cut to the chase and […]

The VMware Workstation team is very excited to announce the VMware Workstation Technology Preview 2018 is available now! This release includes many great new features that we’ve been working on and we would love to hear your feedback in our Tech Preview Community.
Cut to the chase and download the latest bits from our Tech Preview Community:VMware Workstation Technology Preview 2018 community.

What’s New

DirectX 10.1 – We are excited to introduce DirectX 10.1 support with Workstation 2018 Tech Preview. DX10.1 introduces several subtle differences over 10.0

DirectX 10.1 delivers the following graphics improvements:

Full MSAA (Multisample anti-aliasing) support

Shader Model 4.1 support

Cubemap array support

This enhancement allows users to run games that require DirectX 10.1, and improves performance for DX10.0 games and apps. Test it out and let us know how what you think about the graphics quality and performance.

Use the API to include Workstation in your development pipeline to rapidly clone, configure, spin up and run automated tests within your VMs, and then destroy them when finished to repeat the process from your desired state.

Windows 10 High DPI support – We have improved our support for High DPI configurations from both a Host and a Guest perspective:

Host level high DPI support. Workstation UI will auto detect the host level DPI and auto adjust the layout to meet this DPI. For example, if the original DPI scaling of your host display is 100% and you change it to 200%, Workstation UI will automatically update its layout.

This is extremely useful for multimonitor scenarios, when you have different DPI settings for each monitor, when you move Workstation UI from one monitor to another monitor with different DPI, the UI will automatically adapt to DPI of the monitor it’s being drawn on.

Guest DPI sync with host. When there is DPI change on the host side, the guest OS will be able to adjust its DPI to match the host DPI.

This feature requires both host and guest to be Windows 10.

ESXi Host/cluster view when connecting to vCenter – We’ve add a new Hosts and Clusters view when using Workstation to connect to a vCenter Server from Workstation. Users now have visibility to navigate to non-VM objects (ESXi hosts, Resource Pool and vApp) and their respective relationship hierarchy (i.e. Datacenter > Cluster > Resource Pool > vApp). Users can also switch back to the ‘flat’ VM view with a single click.

USB Auto Connect to virtual machine – Workstation 2018 Tech Preview provides a long-requested feature for managing USB device access.When users plug in an USB device, (a USB storage device for example) this USB device can be automatically connected to a powered on virtual machine without having to manually add the device. This is currently available only to Windows hosts.

Linux Host Wayland Support – Workstation can now run on Linux hosts using the new Wayland desktop architecture. We expect full coverage here, so we encourage users to try this out and let us know in the Tech Preview community if you experience any issues.

Installation Notice

To run this Technology Preview, users should uninstall previous versions of Workstation before installing this software. Note that the drivers included in this preview have NOT been signed (we only get our release build drivers signed), so Windows will prompt you accordingly during installation.

The system requirements for this Technology Preview remain the same as VMware Workstation Pro 14. See this VMware Workstation Document for more detailed system requirements.

This Technology Preview includes changes to the underlying virtualization platform, which is under active development. There are no guarantees that changes in this preview will be forward-compatible with other VMware software, nor that these changes will be present in future supported releases of VMware Workstation.

Uninstallation Notice

To uninstall the VMware Workstation Technology Preview:

1. Uninstall VMware Tools from each virtual machine used with the Technology Preview

2. Ensure that all virtual machines are downgraded to be compatible with an earlier version of VMware Workstation (VM > Manage > Change Hardware Compatibility…)

The virtual machine console displays a black screen
After you upgrade from VMware Workstation 12.x Pro to VMware Workstation14 Pro and power on a virtual machine, the virtual machine might display a black screen.

This issue is now resolved.

Some VM tabs are missing and need to be manually reopened each time VMware Workstation Pro is relaunched
When multiple VM tabs have been opened and Workstation is relaunched, some VM tabs are missing. Each missing tab must then be opened manually.

This issue is now resolved.

Import of a virtual machine with a VMware Paravirtual SCSI disk adapter type might fail
When you use VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion to import a virtual machine with a VMware Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) disk adapter type, the import operation might fail with the following error:
Invalid target disk adapter type: pvscsi

This issue is now resolved.

We really appreciate your help testing this software. Please share your feedback in our VMware Workstation Technology Preview 2018 community. We will try to answer any questions that you may have, and we’ll investigate any issues that are raised. We also encourage users to also share other thoughts about how we can improve or enhancements that you would like to see in future releases.

]]>https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2018/06/workstation-tech-preview-2018.html/feed5Celebrate 10 Years on the Mac with this once-in-a-lifetime deal!https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/10/celebrate-10-years-on-mac.html
Fri, 27 Oct 2017 18:00:56 +0000http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/?p=1999This year at VMworld we had a special treat for our attendees with our Fusion 10th Anniversary Collector Box. Outside the box it says Fusion 10 all over, but with the box came a USB card that has you covered on all platforms: Workstation 14 Pro for Windows, Workstation 14 Pro for Linux and Fusion 10 Pro for […]

This year at VMworld we had a special treat for our attendees with our Fusion 10th Anniversary Collector Box. Outside the box it says Fusion 10 all over, but with the box came a USB card that has you covered on all platforms: Workstation 14 Pro for Windows, Workstation 14 Pro for Linux and Fusion 10 Pro for Mac.

Of course this is great if you were lucky enough to attend VMworld, but what if you didn’t?

Out of luck, right?

Not anymore!

We pulled back a curtain in the storage room and found a whole crate of boxes that didn’t make it into the hands of our users, so we’re making them available to you for only $160!

That’s right, for the price of a new copy of Fusion 10 Pro with this box you get 2 copies of Workstation 14 Pro, a copy of Fusion 10 Pro* AND a very svelte collector tin and coaster for your office!

Over $660 in just software for only $160!

What else is there to say? If you dig cross platform virtualization, this the best deal you’ll find on the web today. Hurry while supplies last!

*Includes a ‘Thank You’ card insert which contains 3 keys: 1 Fusion 10 Pro Full License Key, 1 Workstation 14 Pro for Windows NFR Key, and 1 Workstation 14 Pro for Linux NFR Key. “NFR” keys are promotional keys and will unlock all capabilities of the software but do not include entitlement for filing support requests or major-version upgrade discounts. Offer is in USD and only available in the United States.

]]>Workstation 14 Pro and Player Now Available!https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/09/workstation-14-now-available.html
https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/09/workstation-14-now-available.html#commentsWed, 27 Sep 2017 05:45:32 +0000http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/?p=1991We are proud to announce the general availability of VMware Workstation 14 Pro and VMware Workstation 14 Player. Download It Here! Buy or Upgrade Here! What’s in the release? These releases build on a long tradition of leading edge virtualization capabilities, and this year we’ve introduced new features that will help IT Professionals and Businesses […]

What’s in the release?

These releases build on a long tradition of leading edge virtualization capabilities, and this year we’ve introduced new features that will help IT Professionals and Businesses be more productive and more secure.

Virtual Hardware Platform 14

Workstation 14 Pro builds from the newest vSphere Virtual Hardware Platform, now at version 14, and with it delivers new features such as support for:
– Microsoft Device Guard and Credential Guard “Virtualization Based Security” feature support for Windows 10 Guests (Guests only at this time)
– A new Virtual NVMe device for faster disk access on SSD storage and a requirement for vSAN testing
– UEFI Secure Boot, required for VBS and supported with ESXi 6.5 Virtual Guests.
– A new Virtual Trusted Platform Module which is used to manage keys for guest encryption services such as BitLocker.
– Support for the latest Intel Kabylake and AMD Ryzen CPUs

Workstation Pro: The Master of Local Desktop Virtualization.

Workstation 14 Pro adds upon this with new Virtual Network Simulation features. We’ve had Network Packet Loss and Bandwidth before, but we have now added Network Latency to the mix, configurable for both Incoming and Outgoing traffic for each virtual network adapter. This feature makes it easy to test the resiliency of your applications under harsh network conditions.

We’ve of course also added support for Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, known also as build 1709 or ‘Redstone 3’, which includes Windows Server 2016, as both Host and Guest. On the Linux side we have added support for Ubuntu 17.04, and Fedora 26 as both Host and Guest.

Seamless vCenter Deploy

For users looking to test the vCenter Server Appliance, Workstation Pro now provides a guided wizard to make the deployment effortless.

New Remote Controls

When connected to vSphere, users can now control Power operations for ESXi hosts. Power them off, Reboot them or bring them in or out of Maintenance mode right from Workstation Pro.

The Essential Virtualization Tool

All this and numerous bug fixes, small enhancements, and performance gains leveraging newer CPU hardware features for virtualization are what continue to make Workstation Pro the essential tool for IT professionals, and Workstation Player the ideal solution for secure virtual desktops.

]]>https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/09/workstation-14-now-available.html/feed21Announcing VMware Workstation 14https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/08/announcing-vmware-workstation-14.html
https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/08/announcing-vmware-workstation-14.html#commentsTue, 22 Aug 2017 12:01:47 +0000http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/?p=1972VMware Workstation 14: Pro & Player It’s about that time, and this year we’re very proud of the advancements we’ve made with our original flagship products, VMware Workstation Pro and Workstation Player. Once released this October, in addition to supporting Microsoft’s Fall updates for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, and updated Linux support for Fedora 26 and Ubuntu 17.04, […]

VMware Workstation 14: Pro & Player

It’s about that time, and this year we’re very proud of the advancements we’ve made with our original flagship products, VMware Workstation Pro and Workstation Player.

Once released this October, in addition to supporting Microsoft’s Fall updates for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, and updated Linux support for Fedora 26 and Ubuntu 17.04, Workstation 14 Pro will deliver enhanced security with support for Virtualization Based Security (VBS) features of Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows Server 2016 Guests, improved Virtual Networking, and added new support and controls for working with vSphere and the vCenter Server Appliance.

Virtualization Based Security: Device Guard and Credential Guard in a Virtual Machine

The Virtual Hardware Platform also includes support for the latest processors from both Intel and AMD while adding new Virtual Firmware features such as UEFI and Secure Boot.

Along with the existing network speed and packet loss simulator, a new Network Latency Simulator further enables developers to run tests and simulate a specific network environment, including distance and network quality to test application resiliency. This and other advanced networking features will enable administrators to customize the name of virtual network adapters for better organization.

New Remote vSphere Controls

Workstation 14 Pro has added controls when interacting with remote ESXi hosts, directly or through vCenter, with new options for Host Reboot, Shutdown and to toggle Maintenance Mode on ESXi hosts.

Added Host Power + Maintenance Operations

VMware Workstation 14 Player

VMware Workstation 14 Player is a streamlined offering in the Workstation 14 product line, and leverages the same hypervisor technology platform as Workstation 14 Pro. As such, Player gets many of the same benefits of it’s big brother Workstation Pro including performance, bug fixes, and updated hardware and OS support. Like Pro, Player can now also run Windows Virtualization Based Security VMs with Device Guard and Credential Guard, making it useful for delivering compliant corporate desktops in a secure container to end users.

For businesses and enterprises, Workstation Player gives users the power to run restricted VMs that comply with corporate policy. Combined with VBS security features, this commercial solution is designed for businesses looking to run a single, secure, virtual desktop on a corporate or BYO PC.

Workstation 14 Player will also be available for free for personal, non-commercial use.

Customers who purchased VMware Workstation 12.5 Pro or VMware Workstation 12.5 Player between Aug 22 and November 1st, 2017 will receive a free electronic upgrade to VMware Workstation 14 Pro and VMware Workstation 14 Player respectively. No action is required for this free upgrade.

Please see our FAQ

Availability and Pricing VMware Workstation 14 Pro and VMware Workstation 14 Player will be available in early October, from vmware.com for $249.99 and $149.99 respectively.

VMware Workstation 11, 12 and 12.5 customers can upgrade to VMware Workstation 14 Pro for $149.99. VMware Player 7 Pro and VMware Workstation 12 Player customers can upgrade to Workstation 14 Player for $79.99.

]]>https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/08/announcing-vmware-workstation-14.html/feed9Workstation Pro Tech Preview 2017 Available Nowhttps://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/07/tech-preview-2017-available-now.html
https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/07/tech-preview-2017-available-now.html#commentsTue, 18 Jul 2017 17:23:47 +0000http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/?p=1967The VMware Workstation team is proud to announce the VMware Workstation Technology Preview 2017 release! This release includes many great new features that we’ve been working on and we would love to hear your feedback through our Tech Preview Discussion Community. What’s New New OS Support and Platform Features Windows 10 Creator Updates Support. This latest member of Windows […]

The VMware Workstation team is proud to announce the VMware Workstation Technology Preview 2017 release! This release includes many great new features that we’ve been working on and we would love to hear your feedback through our Tech Preview Discussion Community.

What’s New

New OS Support and Platform Features

Windows 10 Creator Updates Support. This latest member of Windows 10 family is now supported by VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017, as both host and guest.

Other New OS Support. Workstation Tech Preview 2017 adds support of a variety of new operating systems including Ubuntu 17.04 and Fedora 26. If you are running these latest operating systems, we would like to hear your feedback on how they perform with this Tech Preview release. If you are using other OSes in Workstation Tech Preview 2017, we would also like to learn your feedback.

Guest VBS Support – Security is one of the most critical aspects for information technology and there is no difference in virtualization. With the new platform, we are excited to invite you to try VBS (Virtualization Based Security) within Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 running as guest operating systems in VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017. Guest VBS Support is still under actively development and we would like to hear your feedback such as user experience and performance.

UEFI Secure Boot – One of the more interesting features of vSphere 6.5 is the adoption of Secure Boot for ESXi. We are happy to announce this great security feature is also adopted by VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017!

Virtual NVMe support – NVMe is becoming increasingly important in the storage market. With the new virtual hardware platform, VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017 is able to take advantage of the NVMe (NVM Express) controller which is also supported in ESXi 6.5.

Networking Features:

Rename Virtual Networks – Many users would like to customize the name of virtual network adapters, especially for powered users who may have several of them in building a virtualization lab. With VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017, you can rename networks in the Virtual Network Editor. This feature currently is only available for Windows host operating systems. Try it and let us know how it works.

Network Latency Simulation – Testing software and applications with Workstation Pro is very popular because of its convenience and cost-efficiency. Now with the new Network Latency Simulation feature, along with the existing network speed and packet loss simulator, you can easily simulate a specific network environment using VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017. Simply enable this feature by checking the new options in Network Adapter Advanced Settings.

IP Address Display on VM Console – You don’t have to log into your VM to check the IP and MAC addresses. With VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017, these information is directly displayed on your VM console. The latest VMware Tools is needed to enable this feature.

Improved vSphere Integration

vSphere/ESXi Host Power Operation – Many users connect to vSphere ESXi and vCenter with VMware Workstation to remotely manage virtual machines. Now you can also perform power operations to ESXi hosts, including Enter/Exit maintenance mode, restart and shutdown, and directly from VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017.

Import VCSA – VMware Workstation is the best solution to run and learn VMware datacenter products on a local machine. With improved OVF/OVA support, you can import VCSA (VMware vCenter Server Appliance) to VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017 much easier than before.

There are some known issues so be sure to check out the ‘What’s New’ document in the Tech Preview community. The download is available for free to VMTN Community users, and we implore that this build is only for testing and evaluation purposes. While we make every effort to ensure every build we release is stable and solid, this is a pre-release build that is still in development and as such we do NOT recommend using this build on production systems.

We of course don’t guarantee that any features will make it to a generally available and fully supported release, but we’re eager to hear your feedback on our progress.

So go on, grab the build from our community, give it a test drive on your lab machine and tell us what you think!

]]>https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/07/tech-preview-2017-available-now.html/feed11Using VMware Workstation Pro as the perfect demo toolhttps://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/06/using-vmware-workstation-pro-perfect-demo-tool.html
Fri, 23 Jun 2017 19:06:26 +0000http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/?p=1956By Matt Evans. An EUC Senior Specialist SE based in the UK. Matt has been with VMware for 9 months and has been working in the Server based Computing\EUC space for 20 years. Outside of work he is interested in music and running, having completed the London Marathon in April. As a member of the End User […]

An EUC Senior Specialist SE based in the UK. Matt has been with VMware for 9 months and has been working in the Server based Computing\EUC space for 20 years. Outside of work he is interested in music and running, having completed the London Marathon in April.

As a member of the End User Compute Specialist Sales Engineer team, I use VMware’s cloud hosted demo environment 99% of the time. However, we have all been in the situation where we need to demonstrate the solution but there is no network connection available. That’s one of the reasons I built a VMware Horizon environment in Workstation Pro. The other reason is that the ‘techie’ in me wants to have an environment that I have free rein in. As well as my Horizon environment, I built a Windows 10 virtual machine so that I had a Windows 10 device to manage from my AirWatch demo lab.

As I said I am techie at heart and I like to use three 3rd party tools with my demo lab to enable me too deep dive, create screenshots and shadow my iPhone, now let me explain.

Apowersoft Phone Manager

VMware Workstation Pro supports USB devices which is critical to this tool. I can connect USB devices, such as my iPhone, to my laptop and map them through to the Virtual Machine. As part of my Horizon demo I always like to show the user experience from an iPhone connecting to a VDI or RDSH application as well as what the Workspace ONE portal looks like and what the user experience looks like.

Apowersoft Phone Manager is similar to iTunes, in the way it helps you manage your device. The one feature that it offers that iTunes does not, is the ability to shadow the device, you can see the Workspace ONE app running on my phone below. You can also switch to full screen mode. Being able to shadow the device means that can deliver a demo from my iPhone or iPad and display it through Workstation Pro and onto a larger screen, typically a projector.

I tend to make screenshots of this type of demo as well as documenting the setup and configuration of Horizon, for example. This leads me on nicely to the next tool.

Apowersoft Phone Manager

Lightscreen

Typically I deliver my product demonstrations out of VMware Test Drive, which is managed cloud environment, therefore software updates are managed centrally and not done by me. That’s one of the reasons I use Workstation Pro to run my own demo lab, so I can go through the experience of updating and managing the environment as I would like. When I go through the update I tend to take screenshots that I can then use for custom presentations or share with customers and partners so they know what to expect when they go through the updates themselves. It also helps to take screenshots to help articulate a configuration or specific feature with a customer when a real time screen-sharing tool is not an option. As Workstation Pro allows clipboard redirection between my host OS (laptop) and virtual machine it is very easy for me to take screenshots and then copy them out of the Virtual Machine into One Drive.

Within Lightscreen I configure a hotkey to take the screenshot, a directory to store the image in and also whether I want to capture the whole screen or just the active window – I tend to use the active window. Then I just run through my sequence, click the hotkey when required and finally when I have finished, copy the images out of the Virtual Machine and paste them to my local drive.

Apowersoft Phone Manager

ASIDE: The one feature that could improve Lightscreen would be if you could also capture short video files, even if that was limited to say 10 seconds.

Apowersoft Phone Manager

Glasswire

In my opinion, I have saved the best until last. Glasswire offers Network Monitoring, Threat Monitoring and a Firewall. Because my Virtual Machines are pretty isolated in Workstation Pro I am not really using the software for its main intended purpose. However, I love the Network Monitoring aspect. Being able to monitor the network gives me the visibility of what processes are running, what they are doing and what bandwidth they are using. A good example of its use case for me would be to look at the different protocols we support in Horizon and how they perform.

As you may know we support Blast, PCoIP and RDP within Horizon, and Glasswire enables me to monitor exactly what they are doing – sorry but I did warn you I was a techie at heart. The screenshot below shows all my active processes and their bandwidth usage over a 5 minute period, the time period can be adjusted as you can see in the top right corner.

Glasswire

Let me give you an example of a customer scenario. I was involved in a project where we planned to leverage the customer’s internal Java based VPN client to secure a connection for remote workers and then automatically trigger a connection to a cloud based Virtual Desktop. To be able to configure this process we needed to know which processes were active when a connection was established, if they only used HTTPS and what the differences would be if we connected using the HTML5 client rather than the standard Windows Client. Firstly I logged into my Windows client machine in Workstation Pro and launched the Horizon Client, I then made a connection to a hosted Windows 10 machine and checked Glasswire. From the image below you can see that the Horizon client has two processes running, both of which are making an HTTPS connection to the same host.

Glasswire

Secondly, I wanted to see how the Horizon connection varied when using the HTML5 client rather than the Windows client. The HTML5 client is represented by Chrome, as that was the browser I was using. It is still using HTTPS but in this instance it is a single connection to hv6emea.vmwdemo.com

Glasswire

With the help of this information we were able to configure the VPN client to pass these connections through giving the customer end users and simple and familiar use case.

Running Glasswire in a clean virtual machine in Workstation Pro is ideal as it allows me to remove many of the other processes that could dilute the information I am trying to gather,

Your Go

Without Workstation Pro I would have had to install my demo lab on my native endpoint, which just wouldn’t be viable due to requirements of AD, DHCP, DNS and in some case multiple versions of the same software. Another option would have been to pay for cloud resource to run the virtual machines. This generally is a good option but I want access to all the components, for example the Hypervisor or AD Controller, which is not always an option with Cloud based environments and I wanted to guarantee 100% control.

]]>Workstation 12.5.6 Now Available with Windows 10 Creators Update Supporthttps://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/05/workstation-12_5_6-windows-10-creators-update-support.html
Fri, 19 May 2017 03:48:12 +0000http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/?p=1948We’re happy to announce some new updates to VMware Workstation 12.5, both Pro and Player editions. In this release, versioned 12.5.6, we’ve improved support for the upcoming Windows 10 Fall Creators Update as both Host and Guest, as well as several bug, and security fixes. You can grab the update by using the Check for […]

]]>Hypervisor Security Mattershttps://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/03/hypervisor-security-matters.html
Thu, 30 Mar 2017 20:09:00 +0000http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/?p=1939 As I’m sure you noticed, we’ve delivered a flurry of patch-releases for Fusion and Workstation in the last few weeks. Want to know why? Because security matters. More visibility The Pwn2Own competition at the CanSecWest conference put a huge bounty on ‘vmescape‘. They’re not the first to do this, and they won’t be the last. And […]

As I’m sure you noticed, we’ve delivered a flurry of patch-releases for Fusion and Workstation in the last few weeks. Want to know why? Because security matters.

More visibility

The Pwn2Own competition at the CanSecWest conference put a huge bounty on ‘vmescape‘. They’re not the first to do this, and they won’t be the last. And I want to be clear up front, we’re delighted that they helped us make our products more robust, and more secure.

For those not following this closely, ‘vmescape’ is the challenge of executing code on a host machine, that originated on a virtual machine. In other words, you have to execute something on a virtual computer, that tricks the hypervisor, such as Fusion, Workstation, ESXi, etc, in to passing that code through to the host computer, effectively breaking out of the guest with the intent of controlling or damaging the host.

While the successful exploits themselves are interesting to note, the likelihood of this causing actual damage to you, in the real world is pretty small. Partly because of the nature and complexity of the technology involved, and partly because of the bevy of unknowables of a real production system. Mike Foley, one of our foremost security gurus, notes:

Hard to do, but still imperative that we fix. And so we have. With an abundance of gratitude to our incredibly talented security team, working directly with our multi-discipline engineering teams, we think we’ve been on top of things.

Platform security is critically important

Virtualization technology today is used more widely, and in more critical systems than ever. With VMware having such a prominent footprint both on the desktop and in the data center, we take our role and responsibility in this very seriously.

While many of our Fusion & Workstation customers are considered ‘consumers’, (i.e. they have a single copy installed on their own personal machine), the majority of our customers are business, both small and large. Security for the end-user is important, but when we’re talking about corporate systems and virtual desktops that connect to those systems, the need for an air-tight virtualization stack becomes an imperative.

To that end, we’ve delivered 3 critical patches for both Fusion and Workstation (both Pro and Player), each addressing different security issues documented in our Security Advisory announcements (which can be found here), all within the past 3 weeks.

We understand that this makes it tricky for you. Updating software is never fun – even if it’s fully automated – and we appreciate the anxiety we may have caused you, but I hope you agree, it was worth it

Collaboration is Key

We’re very proud of our engineering teams. Cross collaboration between them is critical when addressing complex issues, made more difficult by the need for rapid delivery. And of course while patching is critical, maintaining a high level of product quality is something we refuse to compromise on.

We work directly with security researchers who demonstrate some pretty slick exploits at several security shows, and we’re keen to see that trend continue. In this day-and-age, when breaches and data privacy issues are making mainstream headlines, we couldn’t do this without the collaboration we get from the community. We are immensely grateful to you.

Now, Secure yourself

It’s always important to stay up to date with security patches for all software you own/use/control. If your software hasn’t auto-updated already, get the latest patches [here]. And while we have your security attention, we recently came up with a nice little way to use Fusion and Workstation to help increase both your own security and privacy when dealing with online threats.

For this use case, we have a nice summary infographic and video, with more detailed writeups for safely surfing the Internet with Fusion and Workstation [linked respectively].

]]>Workstation now a part of the VMUG Advantage Programhttps://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/03/workstation-vmug-advantage.html
Wed, 22 Mar 2017 21:03:29 +0000http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/?p=1935Hi folks! Here on the Personal Desktop team (which is the product group containing our Fusion and Workstation products), we love our users. We bend over backwards to make sure the products are secure, and work in a way that our users expect with regular new features and the stability we’ve all come to depend […]

Here on the Personal Desktop team (which is the product group containing our Fusion and Workstation products), we love our users. We bend over backwards to make sure the products are secure, and work in a way that our users expect with regular new features and the stability we’ve all come to depend on.

In this vein, the VMware User Group, or VMUG, members are our most passionate and advanced users. These are the kind of users who rely on Fusion or Workstation to test applications and operating systems locally before pushing to their bigger vSphere platform. They know virtualization inside and out, are our earliest adopters, and dedicate time to testing the latest and greatest from any vendor that wishes to have a footprint in their data center.

The VMUG Advantage program includes the ‘VMUG EvalExperience’ subscription which provides exclusive access to 1-year evaluation licenses of VMware’s flagship products and solutions, for use as a learning tool in your home lab. In addition, you get:

EVALExperience

20% Discount on VMware Training Classes

20% Discount on VMware Certification Exams

$500 IBM SoftLayer Cloud Credit

35% Discount on VMware Lab Connect

$100 Discount on VMworld Attendance

The full list of products in the EVALExperience program includes:

VMware Workstation Pro 12.5

VMware Fusion Pro 8.5

VMware vCenter Server Standard for vSphere 6

VMware vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus

VMware vCloud Suite Standard

VMware vRealize Operations

VMware vRealize Log Insight

VMware vRealize Operations for Horizon

VMware Horizon Advanced Edition

VMware vSAN

If you’re an admin who works with VMware’s products, there’s never been a better time or reason to join the VMUG Advantage program!

]]>Using Workstation to Browse the Web More Safelyhttps://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/02/safe-surfing-with-vmware.html
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 23:23:51 +0000http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/?p=1923Did you know you can use VMware Workstation or Fusion to safely browse the web? Check out our video and learn more below! ');}) A quick History Lesson During the Internet’s infancy, ‘Surfing’ the World Wide Web was an exhilarating experience. (complete with a soundtrack!) It wasn’t called ‘Web Surfing’ without good reason, although we don’t […]

The Internet was great, but in addition to being a place to share ideas it needed to be a place for consumer commercial activity in order to gain the resources (i.e. corporate sponsorship and investment) needed to grow.

With bring the most connected generation in the history of the world, we are also now gathering more information than ever.

Things start to go Wrong

We now live in a world where a simple transparent 1×1 pixel .gif can be used to follow and track our online behaviour an endless number of sites across all of your devices. Social media hooks are built into every page for shareability, allowing groups like Facebook, Twitter and Google to learn more about what you click than ever before.

On the darker side of that equation, you have lots of potential for misuse and abuse of this new distributed digital landscape. Ad networks can unknowingly distribute malware, pages can ‘click-bait’ you into accidentally opening a barrage of popups or worse, and mobile devices have not had the same maturity as desktop devices so their ability to block unknown threats is minimal at best.

A Potential Solution

So, what does this have to do with VMware or VMware Workstation?

Workstation can be used to isolate all of this behaviour away from the computer that you are using, keeping you safe and protected.

Because of the isolation provided by the VMware hypervisor technology, using a virtual machine in Workstation effectively creates a sandbox for a second (or third, or fourth…) Operating System on the same computer you’re running.

It runs it the new OS in an isolated way with respect to Memory, CPU, and physical hardware devices. To be cliche about it: “What happens in the VM stays in the VM.”

So when something attacks a browser that’s running in a Virtual Machine sandbox, it has no way of impacting the main computer where you might have more sensitive information stored, like credit card or account numbers or access to otherwise protected networks that are available to the host computer.

And because it’s a virtual machine, you can do other interesting things as well, such as having a ‘snapshot’ for a roll back point, put it on a different network than the physical computer itself, or even bring that same VM to different computers to avoid having to use someone else’s browser.

Kid Friendly Internet-ing

It also makes sense if you have kids. I helped my sister out by having my nephew use a virtual machine. He double-clicks the ‘Kids Internet’ button on the desktop, it fires up a Linux virtual machine, and everything that he and his little brother click on can be easily undone by rolling back to a snapshot taken earlier.

It’s an interesting use case, and makes a lot of sense, especially for the privacy-conscious. There are OS’s out there designed specifically for anonymity such as Tails, Discreete Linux, Whonix, or Qubes OS.

We really think that our users would get a lot of benefit from this sort of a setup, so we put together a short Infographic and Video to share the story.